Wasting Time, Nuclear Edition

French 5-6, block 3. The final bell rings just as I stumble into my seat. Mrs. Lee shoots me a glare but I’m not late. She can’t do anything. The class settles down as Mrs. Lee attempts to talk to us in French. My side of the class shoots her blank stares as she tries to communicate to us in a language that makes about as much sense as baby garbles. On the other hand, the smarter half of the class is having a fluent conversation with her. Adele tells Mrs. Lee about her weekend and how she travels a lot – this is all in French. Usually I just tune it all out.
Why is one side of the class smarter than the other? This is because Mrs. Lee has a combined French 5-6 and 7-8 class. The 5-6 students all sit on one side while the 7-8 students sit on the other. Together there are 10 of us. Well I think. There was a boy, but I’m pretty sure he dropped out. The reason for my believing this is because today he didn’t come to class. We thought that he was just absent; however, during the middle of class, he waltzed right in to drop off his French textbooks. Quitter.
The boy interrupted a conversation we were having with Mrs. Lee about Nuclear waste - in English. None of us understood why we couldn’t just shoot it far into outer space; what was the problem with that? Mrs. Lee insisted that it would harm other aliens on some distant planets. We were now all convinced that Mrs. Lee was an alien. Or at least I was. And that’s when I came up with my brilliant idea. My hand shot up like I had just solved the most complex riddle possible.
“Yes?” Mrs. Lee said with a questioning glance.
Without hesitation, I presented my idea in all its simplicity, “Why don’t we just eat all the nuclear waste?” The class proceeded to burst into laughter. I thought that it was a pretty good idea because we would probably all develop some cool super powers: it would beat storing it in Yucca Mountain.
I can’t tell you exactly what happened after our nuclear waster conversation because we switched back to speaking the language of “Français”. But one thing I was able to pick up on once I stopped paying attention was the fact that it was freezing in the room. Luckily, I had my zebra snuggie on my possessions at the time. Instant comfort. The sound of baby garble talk and the warmth of zebra my snuggie were eventually able to lull me to sleep.
The bell woke me up five minutes later. I was pretty bummed that I didn’t get to finish my nap. But on the plus side, my day was basically over! I gathered my stuff and then proceeded to follow everyone out the room and merge into the traffic of the other students. Not being late, talking about nuclear waste, and being able to take a five minute nap had made this the best third period in a while (considering that usually the nap meant a trip to the nurse’s office). French 5-6, block 3: a class for the storage of the nuclear waste of our time.